Senate recount timeline

Nov. 4: Election Day. Late in the evening, the race between GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and DFL challenger Al Franken is too close to call.

Nov. 5: The morning after the election, Coleman has an unofficial 725-vote lead. By day's end, after adjustments, Coleman's lead is 477 votes.

Nov. 19: Hand recount begins with Coleman up by 215 votes.

Dec. 2: The secretary of state's office asks county election officials to examine 12,000 rejected absentee ballots and sort them by reasons for rejection, including a pile of ballots that may have been turned aside erroneously. The ballots are not to be counted, however.

Dec. 5: The recounting process concludes, with Coleman ahead by about 190 votes. Still to come are rulings on thousands of ballots challenged during the recount.

Dec. 18: The state Supreme Court rules 3-2 that improperly rejected absentee ballots should be identified and counted.

Dec. 19: The state Canvassing Board concludes its review of challenged ballots, and Franken now has an unofficial lead of 250 votes. However, votes from thousands of challenges withdrawn by the campaigns need to a reallocated. A draft listing shows Franken ahead by only 46 or 47 votes.

Jan. 3: The secretary of state's office counts 933 absentee ballots the two campaigns agree were wrongly rejected. Franken now leads by 225.

An Iowa Supreme Court ruling Friday cleared the way for a baseball complex at the "Field of Dreams" movie site in Dyersville, as the state's highest court upheld a lower court's decision that the City Council acted properly when it rezoned the property from agricultural to commercial.

The prosecution of a former Russian military officer accused of leading a Taliban attack on American forces is a radical departure from the U.S.'s long practice of treating fighters as enemy combatants instead of criminals, the man's attorney argued Friday.

U.S. stocks are rising for the sixth day in a row Friday as major indexes continue to set records. The largest gains are going to industries that have been mostly left out of the post-election rally, including health care companies and makers of household goods. Banks, which have led that surge, are slipping.